BIB_ID
417192
Accession number
MA 77.1
Creator
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834.
Display Date
Bristol, England, 1796 April.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1904.
Description
1 item (2 pages, with address) ; 23.7 x 19.3 cm
Notes
The letter is undated. In the Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Griggs argues that it was probably written in late April 1796, based on other letters by Coleridge from the same period and the April 16th publication date of his Poems. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
No place of writing is given and there are no postmarks. However, Coleridge refers to the fact that he is living in Bristol at the end of the letter, suggesting that it was probably written in that city.
The following has been added at the start of the letter in red ink in an unknown hand: "Bristol 1796 before the printing of 2nd edition of Poems."
This collection, MA 77, is comprised of fifteen letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to John Thelwall, one letter from Coleridge to Susannah (called "Stella") Thelwall, two letters from John Thelwall to Susannah Thelwall, one letter from Peter Crompton to John Thelwall, and one incomplete draft of an article on the death of Queen Charlotte. The letters were written from 1796 to 1803, and the draft may have been written in 1818.
Address panel: "John Thelwall."
No place of writing is given and there are no postmarks. However, Coleridge refers to the fact that he is living in Bristol at the end of the letter, suggesting that it was probably written in that city.
The following has been added at the start of the letter in red ink in an unknown hand: "Bristol 1796 before the printing of 2nd edition of Poems."
This collection, MA 77, is comprised of fifteen letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to John Thelwall, one letter from Coleridge to Susannah (called "Stella") Thelwall, two letters from John Thelwall to Susannah Thelwall, one letter from Peter Crompton to John Thelwall, and one incomplete draft of an article on the death of Queen Charlotte. The letters were written from 1796 to 1803, and the draft may have been written in 1818.
Address panel: "John Thelwall."
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from the London dealer J. Pearson & Co., 1904. Removed from a bound volume in June 1967.
Summary
Beginning "Pursuing the same end by the same means we ought not to be strangers to each other. - I have heard that you were offended by the manner in which I mentioned your name in the Protest against the Bills - I have looked over the passage again, and cannot discover the objectionable sentence;" defending the use of the words "unsupported Malcontent" and arguing that he meant the passage "(not as complimentary : for I detest the vile traffic of literary adulation) but as a Tribute of deserved praise;" sending Thelwall his Poems and writing "you will find much to blame in them - much effeminacy of sentiment, much faulty glitter of expression. I build all my poetic pretentions on the Religious Musings - which you will read with a POET'S Eye, with the same unprejudicedness, I wish, I could add, the same pleasure, with which the atheistic Poem of Lucretius;" adding "A Necessitarian, I cannot possibly disesteem a man for his religious or anti-religious Opinions - and as an Optimist, I feel diminished concern. - - I have studied the subject deeply & widely - I cannot say, without prejudice : for when I commenced the Examination, I was an Infidel;" saying that he must conclude the letter abruptly, that he would be happy to hear from Thelwall, and that if the latter is ever in Bristol, there is "a Bed at your service -."
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